About Archive Service Accreditation

The standard defines good practice and identifies agreed standards, thereby encouraging and supporting development. The standard is aligned with other relevant quality assurance schemes, improvement tools and data gathering processes.

It is aimed at organisations that hold archive collections, whatever their constitution, and covers both private and public sector archives. It enables archive services to review and develop their policies, plans and procedures against a UK wide standard which has been developed by the archives sector, identifying strengths of the archive service and providing a framework to improve areas of weakness.

Standard and guidance

Archive Service Accreditation is supported by a suite of documents which explain the scheme.

Archive Service Accreditation standard: this lists the requirements a service must achieve to meet Archive Service Accreditation and the outcomes that can be expected

Guidance and scalability documents: these will help archive services complete the application form and understand the requirements for meeting the standard for their particular service

Glossary: explains some of the terms used in the guidance

Cross reference tables: indicates where the standard links to other standards and schemes